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Talk:Special Topics - Theory and Practice of the Escape
Google Cache dump |- | class="MsgR3" colspan="2" style="font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, 'Myriad Web', Syntax, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: rgb(244, 244, 244); border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(170, 170, 170); padding-top: 2ex; padding-right: 1ex; padding-bottom: 1ex; padding-left: 1ex; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; "|Most private schools in America run on reputation and the quality of their graduates. Whateley Academy has a solid history of graduates who go off to college and kick ass (academically). People like Gloriana plan to go to the Sorbonne. People like Phase plan to go to Harvard or Yale. The continued academic success of Whateley students makes it easier to get further Whateley students into the best institutes of higher learning. (The fact that the headmistress has 2 Ph.D.s and 3 Masters doesn't hurt. The fact that brilliant researchers are willing to come to Whateley and teach high school students further enhances the rep.) Whateley has a large number of classes which give the better students the opportunity to take AP tests or get their coursework scored as college courses. As an example, the personal-study Accounting courses all go for college credit in accounting courses. The basic English and math and science courses are treated as high school level. Advanced courses in these areas (like Ayla's World Lit course) are treated differently. Considering that the teacher of that World Lit course is getting co-authorship on probably 20 journal articles out of that course, he darn well ought to! (Technically, three journal articles on a single subject is often counted as the equivalent of a doctoral thesis, and 20 journal articles in a field like Literature would normally assure said teacher of full tenure at his university, if he did not already have it.) So a bio class like Anna took would have the opportunity for an AP test for the better students. The insanely advanced bio class Billie took probably gets treated as college curriculum material. Ditto for the kind of chem and physics courses the better devisers and gadgeteers take, as opposed to the ordinary science classes taken by the mainstream students. The calculus course Ayla will take in a year or so would have an AP test option. The *really* advanced math courses Whateley has would get treated as college curriculum. (What else are you going to do with a high schooler who aced a course in differential geometry or complex analysis?) At a high-end prep school, it is theoretically feasible for a top-notch graduating student to have AP credits and test credits for over 20 semesters worth of college courses. This can be equally true for Whateley, only more so, because Whateley can teach (or in some cases, MUST teach) advanced courses that even a big name prep school like Choate or Andover cannot routinely offer. On the other hand, plenty of Whateley students never consider (or are considered) for anything like this. Think about Buster, Silo, Tee-Kay, ... Also, on the transcripts that come out of Whateley, there is some... ahem... creativity applied before anyone else gets to see them. Aikido and Survival are listed as 'phys ed'. Powers Theory and Lab are listed as 'general science'. Courses like Costume Shop have equally specious titles. Anna's class she is taking on 'theory and practice of the escape' is listed on transcripts as 'special topics in jurisprudence'. Okay, lots of Whateley students never go to college. They go straight into superheroing or supervillainy. They get hired by major corporations as inventors, or they take their money from their current inventions and they open up their own personal research lab. They don't use their superpowers for a living, but they opt out of the college thing too. Or their GSD makes it unreasonable for them to be able to attend a normal college. But for those kids on the 'college track', Whateley makes an effort to give them an excellent education and place them in an excellent college. Diane ---- "WHO has deactivated my BEAUTIFUL frogs?" |} Addiab 22:08, May 16, 2011 (UTC)